The proposed research involves investigating the relative contribution of information and motivation to the formation and expression of causal attributions for successful and unsuccessful outcomes. A large number of studies have demonstrated successfully the existence of a self-serving bias in the attribution of causality (that is, that individuals tend to accept personal responsibility for positive behavioral outcomes and reject personal responsibility for negative behavioral outcomes). Additionally, recent research has shown that the exceptions to this pervasive tendency may be attributable to high levels of "evaluation apprehension" and resulting modesty in causal ascriptions. However, none of this research has provided data pertaining to the psychological process or processes responsible for subjects' attributions. The proposed research is designed to investigate whether self-presentation concerns or selective biased information processsing provide the best account of self-serving attribution and its systematic reversal. In two experiments, college men and women will serve as therapists (actors) in a study supposedly concerned with evaluating the ability of ordinary persons to provide therapeutic assistance to then test-anxious peers. During the course of the therapy, subjects will be given feedback indicating how effective the therapy session was. Before engaging in the task, subjects will either be told that their videotaped session will be evaluated during the second half of the experimental hour or that an evaluation might or might not take place in the distant future. The contribution of self-presentation and biased information scanning will be investigated by reversing or not reversing the experimental instructions regarding the evaluation (and thus, cognitive set) after the subject's performance but just prior to their completion of the questionnaire items (Experiment I) and by eliminating the contribution of a social desirability response bias through instructions designed to ensure congruence between public and privately accepted responses (Experiment II). In a third experiment, the same conceptual independent variables (motivation and information availability) will be manipulated in an attempt to extend the investigation to the self-serving attributions characteristic of observer-subjects (bystanders).